Conrad Black: Pleasure and pain of life after prison

Conrad Black: Pleasure and pain of life after prison

Conrad Black: Pleasure and pain of life after prison

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Conrad Black leaving court in 2007

The road ahead: Conrad Black leaving court in 2007 after he was sentenced to six and a half years in jail for obstructing justice and defrauding shareholders of Hollinger International

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Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel

She stood by her man: Black with his wife, journalist Barbara Amiel

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Jonathan Aitken

Lessons from experience: Jonathan Aitken, who spent seven months in jail for perjury

The road ahead: Conrad Black leaving court in 2007 after he was sentenced to six and a half years in jail for obstructing justice and defrauding shareholders of Hollinger International

As former Telegraph owner Conrad Black leaves a US jail, Jonathan Aitken remembers the turbulent days that followed the initial euphoria of his own release...

Like the coming of a summer thunderstorm, the anticipated return of Conrad Black to London is already causing rumblings of consternation.

"He will be after revenge," says journalist and broadcaster Andrew Neil. "Irrepressible on the way up, he will be irrepressible on the way down," declares Black's fiercest journalistic adversary, Tom Bower.

Such hand-wringings among media folk in fear of Black settling old scores in the libel courts may be matched by hand-clapping on the social scene in anticipation of a rerun of Conrad and Barbara's legendary parties - in or out of fancy dress.

But hold the front page! Such dreams or nightmares are running well ahead of reality. For whatever levels of elation and adrenaline may be coursing through Black's veins as he walks free on bail from prison with good prospects of getting his fraud conviction overturned, his longer-term road to a new life will be full of ups, downs and surprises.

I understand the re-entry journey of a released prisoner. Ten years ago, I began running the same gauntlet myself, when I walked out of HMP Elmley on January 8, 2000 after serving seven months inside for perjury. My first action on arriving home was to tuck in to a huge and delicious fry-up breakfast with my teenage children. Then I went to have a glass of champagne with my 90-year-old mother. After that I crashed into a deep afternoon siesta sleep in my own bed, truly appreciating the soft pillows and unscratchy sheets as never before.

I will guess that Black will have some similar instant enjoyment of his return to home cooking and creature comforts. But soon after savouring the initial delights of being back in the embrace of my family I began a roller-coaster ride whose principal stages were euphoria; disorientation; painful readjustment; finding out who your real friends are; facing up to the facts of a fresh start; and eventually (in my case) finding peace and fulfilment.

However euphoric Conrad the Conqueror may be feeling on day one as he savours the successes of his legal team and breathes the elixir of freedom, he will soon be facing let-downs and reverses. Some of the disorientation will be physical. No one gets the smells, sounds and corrosive atmospherics of prison out of their system too easily. Black has had a good prison journey.

He related well to his fellow inmates, showed resilience under pressure and became accepted by the convict community in his jail. But none of these positives are adequate preparation for the negatives that soon confront almost every released prisoner. Sleeping badly. Overreacting to slights and hurts. Finding it difficult to re-establish loving relationships with close relatives. And discovering who your real friends are or are not.

London, particularly high society London, is not good territory for re-establishing true friendships. High flyers like Black tend to accumulate a large flock of fairweather friends. They melt away soon after the synthetic phase of temporary celebrity (or notoriety) fades from an ex-prisoner.

So the welcome-back dinner parties for Conrad and Barbara will be well attended. But the help-Conrad-with-his-problems party will be conspicuous for its absentees. Insiders' London can be a cruelly two-faced and unhelpful community.

Various forms of paranoia often surface in the early weeks after a prisoner's release. Why hasn't my good friend X returned my calls? Why isn't my old partner or banker delivering what he promised to deliver? Why are the lawyers on the other side of this or that problem being so impossibly hostile? Why are my media critics attacking with such unfair and untrue reporting? The only way of resolving such feelings of paranoia is to flush them down the loo and to start again on a diet of low expectations and humble pie.

Conrad Black may find that humble pie sticks in his gullet for some time. He may be on a high right now, perhaps feeling vindicated by the US Supreme Court's rulings to the effect that his category of fraud convictions are unsafe. He may be in a combative mood towards past tormentors. But such emotions of triumphalism or vengeance will soon turn to the ashes of bitterness. He should therefore resist them at all costs.

Everyone who walks out of prison carries a lot of baggage. Conrad Black seems to be overloaded with containersful of potential troubles.

They include shareholder law suits, a $71 million bill from the US tax authorities, disputes over offshore assets, and acute liquidity problems.

There is also the overriding criminal hurdle that while his conviction for fraud now looks unsafe, his conviction for obstruction of justice appears to be set in stone.

This means that to an unforgiving and judgmental elite in the city of London it will never be "glad confident morning again" for Black. In this narrow but powerful milieu he can never get his credit or his reputation back.

Some people are more forgiving than others. Americans and Canadians often seem to have greater generosity of spirit than many of their British equivalents.

There is something in the transatlantic zeitgeist which admires comebacks and fightbacks. As a result, there was life after disgrace for many of the villains of Watergate, from President Richard Nixon to G Gordon Liddy, the lead burglar.

For this reason, Black may prefer to avoid the small-mindedness of the fast set in London and plot his recovery in the bigger arena of North America. Over there, his long-term Canadian roots and his shorter-term Palm Beach friendships may prove more helpful to a comeback strategy.

The greatest struggles for an ex-prisoner are the internal battles within one's own heart and soul. Has Black been chastened or humbled by his experiences. Has he changed? Will he seek a completely fresh start using his considerable talents (not least as a writer and communicator) to move into new fields of endeavour. The jury is out on all these questions and there are some signs that Black's ultimate answers will be full of surprises.

So far he has shown courage and character on his travails. He has kept the love of his steadfastly loyal wife Barbara. He has grown in his spiritual faith. He does have a small group of "hoops of steel" friends who may guide him well through the rocky road of re-entry. So what the London media prophesies about Conrad Black today could well turn out to be nonsense tomorrow.

Black particularly admired two friends in his life who may now be relevant to what he will do next. They were Jack Profumo and Richard Nixon.

The last time I attended a big party at the Cottesmore Gardens home in Kensington of Conrad and Barbara, the late Jack Profumo was there. The politician - who in the Sixties fell from grace for lying to Parliament about sharing a mistress, Christine Keeler, with a Russian naval attaché - looked a slightly frail and lonely figure, rather out of place among the glittering birds of high society paradise thronging the grand salons of Château Black.

I talked for some time to him (he had been one of my father's oldest friends). Jack spoke movingly of his years as a political and social pariah in London. Then he said wistfully: "I didn't get asked to parties like this, you know." He was clearly grateful for Conrad's kindness. I bet that today Conrad will be thinking a great deal about Profumo's self-effacing road to rehabilitation.

As for Richard Nixon, perhaps the most remarkable icon of personal recovery in 20th-century history, he was the subject of biographies by both Black and myself, so I feel sure that somewhere in Nixon's post-resignation odyssey there are examples and role model paths that Black will seek to emulate. If that view is correct, neither revenge nor a triumphalist resurrection will last long on Conrad's agenda. Nor will London be an important stage on which he will seek to return to past glories.

Instead, he may learn something from Nixon's inner journey of recovery, surprising himself and the world by seeking and finding peace at the centre. And, like Nixon, he may enjoy, in old age, quoting the words of Sophocles: "Sometimes one has to wait until the evening to see how glorious the day has been."